Basketball Statistician Help Wanted

    The Athletic Department is looking for students to assist staff during the Fall 2016, Winter 2016-17 and Spring 2017 semesters. Students in this position will be keeping live statistics during basketball games. Students must meet all of the following requirements:

    Good computer skills

    Available evenings and weekends

    Knowing basketball rules and statistics

    Students interested in working for the Athletic Department should contact the Athletic Coordinator at their respective(各自的) campuses.

    TP/SS Athletic Coordinator, Michael Simone,240-567-1308

    Rockville Athletic Coordinator, Jorge Zuniga,240-567-7589

    Springfield Athletic coordinator, Gary Miller,240-567-2273

    Germantown Athletic Coordinator, GavriChavan, 240-567-6915

    Why we cry with happiness show: Responding with a negative reaction helps us deal with extreme joy. If you cry with happiness at weddings, you are responding to a happy experience with a negative reaction. The researchers believe the unusual reaction may help renew emotional balance in us and keep extreme emotions under control. The findings make it clear how people express and control their emotions, which could help improve their understanding of people's mental(精神的) health.

    Dr Oriana Aragon set out to explore the phrase “tears of joy”, which she said never made sense to her. But after studying a series of incongruous(不和谐的) expressions, she now understands better why people cry when they are happy. “People may be renewing emotional balance with these expressions,” she explained. “They seem to take place when people are struck by strong positive emotions. People, who do this, seem to recover better from those strong emotions.”

    The report show various examples of responding to a positive experience with a negative emotion, such as, a crying wife seeing the husband returning from war again, and teenage girls screaming at a Justin Bieber concert. Examples also include a baseball player who hits a home run, only to be slapped(拍) on the back by teammates, as well as when people cannot help kissing babies' faces who they consider lovely.

    Dr Aragon and her team discovered that people, who expressed negative reactions to positive news, were able to moderate(缓和) strong emotions more quickly. There is also some evidence that strong negative feelings may provoke positive expressions. For example, nervous laughter often happens when people are faced with a hard situation. We've seen people smiling during times of extreme sadness.

    “The findings affect our knowledge of how people express and control their emotions, which is importantly related to mental and physical health, the quality of relationships with others, and even how well people work together,” Dr Aragon said.

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    So what is rewilding?

    Imagine our natural homes growing instead of shrinking. Imagine species (物种) diversifying instead of declining. That's rewilding. Rewilding is ecological restoration. Rewilding offers hope for wildlife, humans and the planet.

    Why is rewilding important and necessary?

    Our natural ecology is broken. The places where you would expect wildlife to exist have been reduced to wet deserts. The seabed has been destroyed and there have been no living creatures any more.

    Our wildlife is disappearing. Many wonderful species have declined over the past century. We've lost more of our large animals than any European country.

    We need keystone species. These vital species, including top predators (食肉动物), drive ecological processes. Their loss has worsened our living systems.

    Nature looks after us. Good natural ecology can provide us with clean air and water, prevent flooding and store carbon. Rewilding can leave the world in a better state than it is today.

    What are challenges?

    As a long-term project, our "rewilding britain" has its challenges. Many people are not interested, because we have got used to the lack of native forests. Many farmers oppose the idea. They thought it a crazy idea to bring back predators because they would start killing farm animals. It takes time to educate them. Above all, we need money! So we need your help!

    Make a donation.

    Help us bring back living systems and restore wild nature!

With your help we can…

    Open up new chances for rewilding and push for change.

    Develop tools to educate, influence and spread the word.

    Thanks for your support.

    In 1999, 36­year­old Tori Murden McClure became the first woman to row also (单独地) across the Atlantic Ocean, from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. The journey of just over 5,300 kilometers took the American 81 days. Her boat, The American Pearl, was only 7 meters long.

    McClure is a real adventurer. She has been on many mountaineering expeditions, including climbs in Alaska, Kenya and Antarctica. She was also the youngest person in a team that skied 1, 200 kilometers across Antarctica to the South Pole in 1989, and became one of only two women ever to travel to the Pole by land.

    The journey across the Atlantic was her third attempt. The first time she failed because of illness, and during her second attempt, in 1998, she nearly died. She had rowed nearly 5,000 kilometers when her boat was hit by Hurricane Danielle. McClure was suddenly in the middle of 80 kph wind, and surrounded by waves that were 20 meters high. Her little boat turned over five times. McClure was sure that she was going to die­she took the video recorder that she had brought with her and recorded a farewell message to her family and friends. The hurricane continued into night, and The American Pearl turned over five more times. McClure was determined not to send a signal asking to be rescued­she didn't want other people to risk their lives, too. But after the eleventh turning over of her boat, she finally sent it and a large ship came and found her. However, they couldn't get her boat out of the rough sea­it was found months later near the coast of Portugal.

    Tori McClure had concussion (脑震荡) and a dislocated shoulder when she got home. Many people might have given up after an experience such as this, but one year later, McClure was back in her repaired boat and trying again. This time she was successful­and although she again met a hurricane on the journey, which stopped her from breaking the record for the fastest transatlantic (横渡大西洋的) rowing crossing, she only overturned once!

    Alice Robb is an American science journalist who has written for the Washington Post and the New Republic. Her new book, Why We Dream, encourages us to rethink the importance of dreams and to become dream interpreters ourselves.

    Reporter: Recently there's been a massive interest in the science of sleep. Sleep plays a role in maintaining our mental health. Are dreams part of that process?

    Alice Robb: Dreams play a big role in helping us cope with stress, grief and psychological problems. Dreams are an opportunity to work through things that frighten us in real life, to play out worst-case situations in an environment where they have no consequences.

    Reporter: Has anyone explained why dreams contain such surreal (超现实的) elements, strange pictures of time, people, geography and so on?

    Alice Robb：When we dream, the logic centres of our brain—the frontal lobes (大脑额叶) —go dark, and chemicals associated with self-control, like serotonin (血清素) and norepinephrine (去甲肾 上腺素) , drop. At the same time, the emotion centres light up：we have a perfect chemical canvas for dramatic, psychologically intense visions.

    Reporter：You say neglecting to consider our dreams is like "throwing away a gift from our brains without bothering to open it. " What is the gift?

    Alice Robb: When we're dreaming, we're thinking in a state we never have access to by day. Dreams offer the opportunity to think in a different way and show new answers to problems. They show us blind spots on things we might be neglecting in our personal lives.

Reading a book and watching a film are two very different experiences, but expectations can be high when a film of a favourite book is made. There are very many times I have been disappointed by a film of a book I love. So maybe highly regarded books do not always make good films. It is safe to say that great movies may be made from not particularly good books.

The source material may be anything from classic novels, short stones, comic books and stage plays, as well as non­fiction such as biography and autobiography, even those written by ghostwriters. All can work well, but why do many adaptations and indeed remakes fail with both cinema audiences and critics?

A key question is obviously how close to the original the film is. Since a typical film is only around two hours long, it becomes a question of what to leave out, and how to script the dialogue. Sometimes there may be changes to the plot, additions and even different endings to please producers, directors and test audiences. I, like many people, have often left the cinema feeling "the film is not like the book".

Another problem area is the cast. Whether suitable actors are found or not can mean the difference between success and failure. Readers of the book use their imaginations to visualize characters and have very definite ideas about how characters look and sound. This is where I think many film adaptations fall down.

Some books are just too difficult to film for technical reasons, although movies like The Life of Pi are changing this perception. The impact of CGI technology has had a huge impact on the movie industry and allowed the previously unfilmable to become a reality.

 Sometimes authors are very involved in the process and many may even be the screenwriters. This can actually be a bad thing because they may be too close to the material and find it difficult to adapt. At other times they are not the screenwriters, and there are instances where writers have been very unhappy with the film versions of their work. Roald Dahl and Stephen King are examples of this. Even more extreme was novelist J. D. Salinger who made sure no film versions of his popular novels could ever be made. In this situation, it is clear viewers will not be disappointed.